The Feelies - Here Before

The post-punk pioneers return with a much mellower sound

Encircling the laid-back parameters of Tom Petty and REM, this comeback album from US alt-rockers The Feelies – once the toast of 70s New York – finds the years have mellowed the post-punk trailblazers, but they have not drained the band’s knack with a tune.

The Feelies released their incendiary debut, Crazy Rhythms, on Stiff Records in 1980, but by the mid-80s they’d reconfigured their guitar shapes and melodies into something akin to Americana, and it is this pastoral college-rock template which is revisited on Here Before, their first album in twenty years, and proof that aging gracefully can reap harmonious rewards.